techNOcool

This YouTube video blew me away. It seems to embody all the things we've been saying might happen on campuses some day with mobile technology. That ACU was already doing it all with the iPhone surprised and excited me.

I was especially surprised at seeing some of the iPhone features which I didn't think existed yet, like voice recording and video in portrait mode (I thought they must have filmed sideways to get that!). And I wondered what software they were using to do some of the things and how they managed to get it on the iPhone given that the SDK isn't being released until next week.

Then I found a link on iTunesU to better quality versions of the same movie and noticed the description saying this movie was created "to highlight our vision of how the iPhone could be used in a university setting." So it appears they're not really doing these things yet. OK, now I don't feel so much like the world suddenly took a big leap in mobile technology while I wasn't looking!

ACU is, however, giving each incoming student this fall an iPhone or iPod Touch. And I do believe that many of the things they show in the video are already possible and many others soon will be. So this is certainly a trend to watch.

The vision displayed in this video is, to me, the very definition of techNOcool.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I posted a while back on the Flock browser and how it had several nice features in that allowed one to pull the parts of one's online life together in your browser. I stand by my comments that it is a nice browser for those who plug into the social networks and applications of the the web but I have still decided to reset my default browser to Firefox.

There are many rational reasons for defaulting your web browser to Firefox. The main reason that I chose to go back home is that it is simply easier to tag things in del.icio.us using Firefox's plugin than it is to use Flock's del.icio.us integrated favorite button.

Often we talk of the next cool thing that we integrate into our technology lives but often ignore talking about our experiments that don't work out. What are your "failed" experiments?

Posted by James Fadden at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If the new Pulse Smart Pen from Livescribe, a pen that records audio while you use it to take notes, really works as advertised, then all I can say is "Wow". It's not so much the recording of audio that gives it the wow factor - it also records video of what you are writing, so after class you can touch your pen to a spot on your notes and the pen will play back the part of the lecture that was happening when you took those notes.

But wait - there's more. You can also upload the audio and the video to your computer, so now you have your handwritten notes in electronic format.

The pen costs $200, which seems to me to be a pretty reasonable price if it really does what it claims to do. Plus, the ad for it is cute.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)